How to build an effective email marketing campaign

Nirit Braun // 17.11.14

Although every email marketing campaign is different – having different audiences and different goals – there are always a number of steps you should take to begin building your effective marketing campaign.

1. Begin your mailing list

Your amazing email newsletter is a complete waste of time if there’s no audience for it, or if those who do receive it are the wrong audience. If you’ve got nothing to start from, have a look through your own email contacts to see who can be added to your burgeoning list with their consent. You might start out with less than 50 recipients, but this total will creep up fast. Remember, a list of 50 potential customers is worth more than a list of 5,000 uninterested parties. Quality bests quantity every time.

2. Collect user information

Your newsletter list needs to grow, and one of the fastest ways to do it is by capturing user data on-site. Be sure to collect as much information as possible that could be used to personalize newsletters down the line (without aggravating users). More information can be captured on user’s interests using ActiveTrail’s Active Triggers (see below.) This data is key to an effective email marketing campaign.

3. Set goals

Decide what you want to achieve with your email marketing campaign before you begin it. Set quantifiable goals, like a number of views on a product page, or a number of clicks through to the payment completion stage. These goals can be monitored and measured using Google Analytics, which integrates seamlessly with ActiveTrail.

4. Setup automated emails

At this point you may not know much about your new newsletter subscribers, maybe even just a name and email address. Set up a number of emails which will be sent out to customers on a set basis. These do not need to be overly-salesy, in fact they should be the opposite and simply offer value to the reader to build trust. They can be short and generic, but must be useful. They should also include multiple links which offer readers a chance to learn more or engage with your company, which you’ll use in the next step.

5. Create active triggers

With ActiveTrail, you can place users into different sales cycles based on actions that the reader performs. Using ActiveTrail Active Triggers you can also transparently flag users when they click on certain links, automatically growing the amount of information you can use to personalize the email marketing campaign. An example of how this works could be including recommendations in an email based on the links they clicked on in the past. You can automatically show the reader more of the things they are interested in, a powerful marketing technique.

6. Measure your results

Check how well your email marketing performed against the goals you set in step 3. Using ActiveTrail’s advanced reporting, AB testing and Google Analytics, you get a precise view of what’s working and what isn’t, allowing you to tweak and edit your marketing campaign on an ongoing basis.

ActiveTrail makes it a whole lot easier to build an efficient email marketing campaign, so why not get started right away?